


Where a shadow took my place

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Series: Alea iacta est [11]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Female Character, POV Minor Character, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 04:07:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7027867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is Daenerys that she loves best, and Daenerys loves her best in return. Their brothers and other sisters, trueborn and baseborn alike, are a distant afterthought.</p>
<p>(And even if they were not, it is Daeron that they each love best of their brothers - Daeron, the father they wish they had, instead of the great steaming sack of shit that sits the Iron Throne.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where a shadow took my place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Manawydan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manawydan/gifts).



**i.**

Shiera loves Daenerys best. This is the first thing the stories will forget to mention.

They grew up together, spent their girlhood chasing one another around Dragonstone under the watchful eyes of the Queen and Daeron and Mariah, playing with Daeron’s sons as though they were all siblings.

(They are Targaryens, after all. In another life, they might have been.)

Shiera is not held apart for her low birth, or her foreign blood - _we are foreign too, aunty,_ Baelor reminds her on a jape, his Dornish face and Valyrian soul not at all Westerosi - and loves Dragonstone and the family she has there because of it.

But it is Daenerys she loves best. It is Daenerys who shares her bedchamber, Daenerys who tucks her skirts into her sash so she can follow Shiera, who wears stolen breeches, across the rocks by the sea, so they can find sea-stars to match Shiera, the Star-of-the-Sea. It is Daenerys who pleads with Mariah for any rememberances of Shiera’s lost and near-forgotten mother, and Daenerys who presents her with her first piece of silver jewellery, a neat emerald pendant that will one day form part of a much more infamous necklace.

It is Daenerys that she loves best, and Daenerys loves her best in return. Their brothers and other sisters, trueborn and baseborn alike, are a distant afterthought.

(And even if they were not, it is Daeron that they each love best of their brothers - Daeron, the father they wish they had, instead of the great steaming sack of shit that sits the Iron Throne.)

**ii.**

Shiera hates her name, and wishes no one knew what it meant.

_Seastar, Seastar_ , they echo in her wake, and _no_ , it is not _Sea-star,_ not one of those spiney little fish she and Dany used poke in rockpools while it threatened to rain over Dragonstone. _Star-of-the-sea,_ like the curious glimmers and sparks that sometimes shine bright from deep water, but no one cares about that.

Baelor calls her _aunty._  Daeron’s boys all call her _aunty,_ really, but it is Baelor she knows best and speaks with most. Dany and Daeron call her _sister,_ as do Mariah and Maron, after a time, 

Bryden calls her by name but makes a plea of it, desperate and pathetic, and Aegor makes a demand of it, an order, and that is worse even than poor pitiable Brynden.

Daemon calls her nothing at all, because she is of no use to him.

**iii**.

Her place at court is... Odd. No one will remember that she had a place at court at all, because that will not fit with the stories, but she does, and it is odd, but it is hers.

Before, she was hidden among Daenerys’ ladies, part of the court-within-a-court that Dany and Baelor’s Jena maintained, but Daenerys is gone away to Dorne, to her husband.

( _I am scared_ , Daenerys had whispered, the night before she was to meet Maron for the first time.)

_(I love him,_ Daenerys had sighed, the first time Shiera visited at the Water Gardens after Daenerys gave birth to her pretty little daughter, Malora.)

Shiera is in-between now, as she has always been. A bastard, but a royal one. Daughter to a King, sister to a King, but not worth marrying. Wanted by two brothers and wanting neither in return. 

“The maesters have many books,” she says so Daeron one day, shy of him as she has never been before because surely he will laugh at her for this. “Do you think I might study some of them?”

Daeron doesn’t laugh, though, and Shiera is ashamed for thinking he would. Daeron is too good to laugh at someone as hungry for a purpose as she is.

“What sort of books?” he asks. “Tell me, sister, and I will send to the Citadel for whatever you wish to read.” 

(Daeron tells Mariah, who tells Maron, who tells Daenerys, and Shiera is inundated with books and papers and heavy vellum scrolls, and retreats to Dragonstone to read them in peace. Brynden follows, of course, as does Aegor, and when she turns them away Brynden calls her cruel and Aegor calls her a whore.)

**iv.**

Her grandnephew Valarr is the most beautiful thing Shiera has ever seen. No one will believe this, when stories of her vanity become legendary.

She pulls him, screaming, from his screaming mother's body, and screams herself, just because it seems the thing to do, given the circumstances, but Jena begins to cry and so does the babe, bloodied as if by battle and still tied to his mother by a cord.

Jena waves a hand when Shiera asks if she might cut the cord, since she has read that sometimes mothers prefer to do this themselves, if they are well enough, and so she is the first person to hold Valarr totally unbound to his mother's body.

"Thank you, aunty," Baelor says, later, when Jena and the babe have both been washed from blood-red to joyous pink, and the filthy sheets have all been replaced and the whole room smells of fresh linens instead of war. "Thank you, Shiera."

She flushes with pride to have brought Baelor's son into the world, because Baelor is only a little older than her - four years, which does not seem very much now - and she loves him nearly as much as she does Daenerys or Daeron. 

"Well," the maester says from the door, frowning and pouting and disapproving. "Her methods were a touch unorthodox, but I suppose they worked. This time."

When Shiera returns to King's Landing, this time with some sort of new purpose forming in the deep waters of her mind, she finds a gift from Jena tucked in amongst her things - a perfect sapphire, set in silver, with a chain long enough to allow her to wear it with Daenerys' emerald. 

 

* * *

 

_ War is- _

_ War is blood painted across Maekar’s pale back, sheets of it staining him as red as the dragons on his banner. _

_ War is Aerys, pious, peace-hungry Aerys, preaching violence from his chosen pulpit. _

_ War is Daeron’s round shoulders bowing ever further, shame and rage tearing him apart from the inside out. _

_ War for Shiera is a sudden awareness that she and Daenerys have been sheltered, and hidden, and a vicious joy when word of Daemon’s death comes, because Daemon betrayed Daeron and shamed Dany, with those lies he spread of having her maidenhead. _

_ War is Baelor, as much a big brother to Shiera as his father is, riding through the gates of the Red Keep with Daemon’s black dragon trailing in the much behind his horse. _

_ War is the whole world turning on its head, and war is Shiera discovering just how dangerous it is to be one of the infamous Great Bastards. _

* * *

 

 

**v.**

Brynden often calls Shiera a witch, but it is mostly teasing. Sometimes he says  _witch_ and means  _bitch,_ she knows that, but most of the time, he is teasing.

Aegor does not bother to soften his words, and Shiera wonders why it is he has shown such restraint with her. Most women are not lucky enough to suffer only his words, must suffer his fists and feet and all the rest of him - Shiera has tended to several, the sort of beautiful women who would not look to Aegor even if he was a true Targaryen, rather than an inelegant, ill-tempered bastard. 

He does not take rejection well, and forces women to share in his displeasure. Shiera hates him for that, and wishes he would leave her alone so that she might offer her help to the women of court without their suspicious husbands calling her a whore and a bitch and a  _witch_ when they think she cannot hear.

She can always hear. It always hurts.

**vi.**

She hates that Brynden and Aegor fight for her. No one will ever believe this of her even during her own lifetime, save those who know her best.

"I can't bear it," she says, dandling Dany's newest babe on her knee and looking out across the sunset on the water and white marble. It is so quiet here, so peaceful, without the stink of rot and plotting that haunts King's Landing, and Shiera thinks that she might be happy here, if she did not have responsibilities at court.

Who else, after all, can offer quiet comfort to women in difficulties? Who else is there to bring the grievances of forced-quiet women to Daeron, to tend bruises and wounds of both body and soul? 

Who else is there to offer help of a distasteful kind, when there is no other help forthcoming? Shiera is a witch, after all - say a thing often enough and it becomes true - and she will use her powers for good, rather than for ill, as best she can.

"What can't you bear?" Dany asks, her skin pink-brown from the sun and lovelier than ever. "You must tell me, sister - perhaps I can help."

Shiera shrugs, putting off answering in favour of pressing kisses to Queren's fat cheeks and lavender eyes. Daenerys' first son is the living image of his father already, save for those lavender eyes.

"Star-of-the-Sea," Dany sing-songs, leaning her head against Shiera's shoulder. "Talk to me. Tell your big sister."

"Brynden and Aegor," Shiera says, and Dany huffs. "I know, but- what am I to do, Dany? They each speak of wanting, but they mean to own me, I know it!"

"Do you want either of them?" Dany asks. "Even just to want you - I know you never wish to wed, Shiera, but you must sometimes be lonely?"

Sometimes, perhaps, when she has not seen Daenerys or Daeron for a long while, or when Baelor and Jena are away at Dragonstone. She had missed Maekar when he went to Dorne to visit with his little betrothed, and Rhaegel when he went to the Vale to visit with Alys' family, and she has missed Queen Naerys every single day since she died. 

But that is not true loneliness, is it?

"Perhaps," she says, unsure, "but why should I want sulky Bryden or grumpy Aegor to cheer me when I am sad?"

**vii.**

Shiera's necklace is a series of gifts that  _happen_ to match her eyes. 

She has always been self-conscious of her eyes, as much because they are neither dark nor lavender as because they do not match. On Dragonstone, everyone had lavender eyes, save for Baelor and Mariah, and they both had beautiful dark brown eyes that Shiera envied terribly as a girl. 

Daeron used balance her on his knee, when his back was not paining him, and tell her stories of fairy girls and Children of the Forest with mismatched eyes, and promise her that it was not a mark of the Stranger or of some other, darker god, as some people whispered, but of beauty, of power, of  _magic._

So perhaps Shiera was always marked as a witch, and took time to grow into it. Her necklace is subject to a thousand rumours, that it's spelled to make her more beautiful, to hide some deformity, to bewitch men and ensnare women, but in truth, it is a series of gifts, from her brother and her sister and her nephews and their wives, because Shiera loves them and they love her in return. Of course she would wish to wear their gifts, and having all those emeralds and sapphires set into a single necklace allows her to wear all the gifts at once.

Brynden gives her a ruby, set in silver, and it makes her think of his shining red eye through the fall of his pale hair.

Aegor sends her obsidian set in gold, and she smashes the stone, grinding it to dust with her pestle and mortar, and gives the gold to Daeron, so he might find some better use for it.

If Aegor would like her in gold, she will ensure that no one  _ever_ sees her in gold. Aegor turned his back on Daeron, after all, Daeron who loved them all when no one else did, Daeron who saw good in Aegor when even Aegor's precious mother saw him as a failure.

And Aegor thinks to  _own_ her. That, even more than his betrayal of Daeron, Shiera will never forgive.

 

* * *

 

_ Peace allows for Shiera to become… Soft.  _

_ There was always war, even if she never realised it until Daemon raised his banners. War with her father, war with Dorne, war between Uncle Aemon and her father, always her father. _

_ Then there was Brynden and Aegor, Daemon and Daeron, Daena and Elaena, Mariah and the whole of King’s Landing.  _

_ She has been hard her whole life - hard and sharp,  _ like a diamond,  _ Dany teased when Shiera confided in her - and now, in the wake of war and war and rebllion and pain, she softens, and thinks  _ perhaps I am lonely after all. 

_ Daenerys is right so often that it ought to be annoying. _

* * *

 

 

**viii.**

Brynden was not the lesser of two evils, between himself and Bittersteel.

Aegor was everything Shiera detested - rude and brusque, arrogant and unkind, forceful where no force was needed. He never outgrew his childish bastard's bitterness, never outgrew his churlish greed and entitlement. He became exactly the man they all predicted, and became ever uglier with it.

Brynden, though... Well. Brynden was always odd, bookish to an extreme that caused even Daeron to wonder at it, secretive and sly in a way that made many people question his goodness, his heart. 

But he was loyal. He loved deeply, even if in a sideways sort of manner, and never once showed anything but gratefulness to Daeron for all the good he did for them.

Brynden grew into a man none of them expected, and when he presents Shiera with a sapphire the size of a chicken's egg because  _I always preferred the blue to the green,_ she laughs, and lets him kiss her hand. If she refuses him the right to cloak her as his bride, she thinks that she will allow him to bed her as such.

(She does, later, but she makes him court her first, and learn to respect her as something other than a beautiful woman. Shiera is a witch, every man at court knows it, but she makes Brynden understand just what that means before she allows him any greater intimacies.)

**ix.**

 

She almost saved Valarr from the Sickness.  _Almost._

The realm would be a different place indeed had she succeeded, she knows, sees it every day in Aerys' reluctant rule. Valarr was the best of Baelor, with his mother's reserve to temper Baelor's openness, and it breaks Shiera's heart as even Daeron's death did not to see Jena become hollow with loss.

Shiera was the first person to hold Valarr untied to his mother, and the last to hold him before his death - his Kiera gone to Dragonstone in hopes of sparing the child in her belly, Matarys dead, Baelor lost at Ashford, Daeron dying and Mariah sick, and Jena, gods, Jena holding the Stranger's hand in the bed across the room - and it burns in her belly to know that she saved him the first time to lose him the last.

Her cures and tinctures are mocked by the maesters and learned men of court, but those women who've used her potions and salves to spare themselves and treat their children have taken all she has to offer in these terrible times, and there are children yet living who would have died, thanks to Shiera's care.

Not enough children. Never enough children. But some.

Mariah had her Dornish maester, the only person who ever had her care, and he saved her, but Baelor's sons and wife were under the Grand Maester's care, same as Daeron, and only Jena now survives of them all, and Shiera thinks Jena might die from the guilt of outliving her babes.

Aerys is no fit King, and Rhaegel after him will be even worse. Shiera will regret not saving Valarr to her dying day.

**x.**

Brynden was not the great love of her life.

People will talk about her only as an extension of her father's lechery, of the feud between Brynden and Aegor, but that was never Shiera.

She was Daenerys' sister first, then Daeron's, then aunt to Daeron's sons and Daenerys' children. After that, she was Naerys' step-daughter, and then a daughter of Lys. Then a witch, and a healer, and a learned woman. 

Somewhere in the middle, she was a celebrated beauty, and a seductress, but they were mostly rumours - oh, she had lovers, many of them, men and women, but that was less because it amused her to seduce them, as the stories said, and more because they, too, were beautiful, and she wanted to appreciate their beauty properly.

Shiera dies at Summerhall, old and aged and still wise, but no longer beautiful. She watches little Aegon die and sees Valarr, because just as she saved Baelor's first son and lost him later, she pulled Maekar's last boy from Dyanna's body and can do nothing for him now.

"Oh, Daeron," she sighs as the smoke fills her lungs and the fire glints on her sapphires and emeralds, from Dany and Daeron and Bryden and all the others she has lost. "How we must disappoint you, big brother."

The great love of Shiera's life was her family, was Daeron and Daenerys and their children and grandchildren. But that will not make a good story, and so it is forgotten.


End file.
